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As I mentioned previously, CTLab is featuring a symposium this week on the Hamdan Tribunal with Professor Brian Glyn Williams  who testified as an expert witness, and an invited panel of legal scholars and academics ( including blogfriend/SWC member Dr. Marc Tyrell). This week begins with a five-part series on the tribunal itself by Dr. Williams. His posts, so far:

Defending Hamdan: The Capture and Defense of Bin Laden’s Driver

Defending Hamdan: On Ruffling Establishment Feathers

Defending Hamdan: Letter and Spirit of the Law

Next week CTLab in it’s slick, officially rolled-out, version kicks off it’s new iteration by hosting an online symposium on the Hamdan trial ( note, this is not the SCOTUS decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld – though I’m certain that case is also fair game for discussion –  but instead Hamdan’s subsequent trial by military tribunal).

Social Science In War / Online Symposium

“CTlab member Brian Glyn Williams, PhD, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, recently testified as an expert witness for the defence in the trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, “Bin Laden’s Driver”, in the first US military tribunal since World War II…

…On 22 September 2008, CTlab will launch an online symposium on the scholarly and substantive implications of the Hamdan trial. Dr. Williams has drafted an original, narrative account of his experience, and is making it available for discussion through the CTlab weblog. It will be released for public consumption, followed by comments and observations from a panel of invited legal scholars and social scientists based in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.”

I’ll put in my two cents regarding the symposium and Hamdan after the conclusion.

Skilluminati featured a SSI PDF on drugged out paramilitary fighters by Paul Rexton Kan:

“ DRUG INTOXICATED IRREGULAR FIGHTERS: COMPLICATIONS, DANGERS, AND RESPONSES“

From SS Einsatzgruppen to Bosnian Serb paramilitaries to Indonesian brush gangs, intoxicants have frequently been given to erode irregular fighters’ moral constraints and facilitate atrocities.

Much thanks to Eddie Beaver and Lexington Green who separately but nearly simultaneously sent me links this morning to a very fine e-zine, Democracy Journal.org. What caught their eye were the following articles by some familiar names:

“Pentagon 2.0” by Colonel T.X. Hammes

The author of the critically acclaimed The Sling and the Stone reviews the latest book by another premier military theorist, John Arquilla’s Worst Enemy and finds it wanting.

“Return of the Jihadi” by Andrew Exum a.k.a. “Abu Muqawama”

Exum methodically analyzes the implications of “when Omar comes marching home” and offers sensible solutions I would describe as “Interagency COIN Jointness”.

Parenthetical aside: One side effect of the GWOT/Iraq War/Afghanistan, I think we shall see in the coming decade, is to have created a generation of future policy makers and statesmen like we have not seen since WWII.

Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict. Hat tip to Selil.